WEC's Miguel Torres: "It's going to be fun to get my belt back" from Brian Bowles

One look at former WEC bantamweight champ Miguel Torres’ (37-2 MMA, 5-1 WEC) face was all it took to understand his feelings.

Seated in an unfamiliar position on the losers’ side of the table at Sunday’s “WEC 42: Torres vs. Bowles press conference, Torres blankly stared at the gathered media, most of whom appeared as shocked as the former champ that Brian Bowles (8-0 MMA, 5-0 WEC) had defeated – nay, destroyed – the seemingly unbeatable Indiana native.

“In this sport, one shot can change everything,” Torres said. “There’s no excuses for what happened.”

What happened was exactly what Torres had hoped wouldn’t. The former champ told everyone that asked prior to the contest that he simply needed to steer clear of the powerful right hand possessed by his opponent in order to walk away with his unbelievable 18th-straight win.

Instead, he was caught twice on the feet by that devastating blow, sending him crashing to the canvas. He received several more for good measure as he lay prone on the mat, and his face bore the signs of the attack.

“Brian hits really hard,” Torres said. “I saw his shot coming, but I couldn’t get out of the way of it – a big overhand right. He put it away.

“He’s a real aggressive young guy. He’s going to be a good champion.”

The question for Torres now becomes: What’s next?

“I start from the beginning,” Torres answered.

While certainly unfamiliar with loss – tasting defeat for the first time in nearly six years and just the second time in a nine-plus-year career – Torres said all the right things following Sunday’s fight.

“For me, it’s not a step back at all,” Torres said. “It’s a new challenge in my career, and now I have something to look forward to, something to train for.

“When you’re on top for a long time, it’s hard to keep pushing yourself because you’re always on top. I’ve got to get back on the bottom because he’s on top, and I have something to work for now. It will be a good challenge for me.”

And while Torres’ voice passed along the proper message, the look on his face told a different story – that he was disappointed, frustrated, sad, upset.

Bowles made a name for himself on Sunday night, shocking the world in a manner not seen since Matt Serra stunned current UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre in April 2007. But St. Pierre has since bounced back from that devastating moment with six-straight wins, including a thrashing of Serra in the rematch.

Now it will be Torres’ chance to show how he can deal with adversity, the mark of any true champion.

“The more you stay on top, the harder it is to keep hold of everything,” Torres said. “I was on top for a long time. … I don’t think of this as a setback at all. It’s a new challenge in my career.

The Latest

Since the early days when the sport was anything but a mainstream endeavor, the MMA industry has thrived and survived through various websites, forums and, perhaps most importantly, social-media platforms.

In this week’s Trading Shots, Danny Downes and Ben Fowlkes look at Ronda Rousey’s 34-second victory over Bethe Correia at UFC 190 and try to put it into terms that capture the moment without getting swept away by it.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?